


Isolation (is Relative)

by orphan_account



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe, Asexual Castiel, Asexual Character, Episode Related, Episode: s04e17 It's a Terrible Life, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-22
Updated: 2012-11-22
Packaged: 2017-11-19 06:28:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,527
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/570217
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Castiel is an angel bound to the Earth, caught between maintaining a day-to-day human life and longing to return to Heaven. Dean Smith is overworked and married to his job. Both of them are, in their own ways, very much alone.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Isolation (is Relative)

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by [this](http://bubbly-basmati.livejournal.com/28101.html#cutid1). Based only loosely on the alternate universe presented by "It's a Terrible Life"; probably due to receive another round of editing in the near future.

There are worse fates than being bound to Earth. Castiel knows this; they could have torn his Grace away, or barred him forever from the gates of Heaven, or even—if they had been in a particularly cruel state of mind—cast him into purgatory.

This is nothing, by comparison. A brief exile, a blink in the face of the length of his lifetime. He once watched an ice age come and pass, the chill crawling forth from both poles of the planet to knit together over the equator before fading back again; this should be nothing. This should be easy.

It isn’t, of course. 

Too often he finds himself standing on the balcony of his bare apartment (he hasn’t bothered to fill it with the sentimental clutter that humans like to collect; objects are meaningless to an angel, dead _things_ compared to the glimmer of souls that he sees), staring up at the sky. He misses his siblings, misses stretching his wings and soaring through the barriers of space and time and dimensions: he misses being himself as he should be, free and surrounded by family.

Here he feels distant and alone, not so different from what he must look like to the humans: a tax accountant on his own in a big city, coming home every night to a cold apartment and darkness that sighs with emptiness.

Of course, penance was never meant to be pleasant.

—

Dean Smith sees the new accountant at the firm for the first time Monday morning, 6:53 AM, when he nearly runs him over as he speeds his way into the company parking garage.

Dean’s got a latte in one hand, and the wheel in the other, and there’s seven minutes left before he’s expected to be at his office (and, okay, maybe it doesn’t matter whether or not he’s _that_ on-time, but he doesn’t want to give his bosses a reason not to promote him when the time comes), and he doesn’t see the man in the tan trench coat step onto the crosswalk until it’s almost too late. As it is, he slams on the brakes, sloshes hot coffee over his hand, and swears profusely.

And the weird thing is—the really weird thing is—that the man doesn’t so much as _flinch_ at the sight of Dean’s Mercedes hurtling towards him, watches as it screeches to a halt and then keeps walking until he’s on the other side of the garage entrance. Dean, baffled, can only drive on and find his parking space, losing valuable minutes to locate the tissues that have fallen somewhere under the seats to mop latte off his fingers.

He doesn’t really meet the man until later, when Robert, the head of investments, calls a meeting to introduce their newly-hired staff. He finds himself seated several chairs down from the trench-coated man (Castiel Milton, Dean learns), just close enough to get a better look at him: a little ruffled, simply-dressed, blue-eyed, with shoulders that sag as though he's bearing the weight of the world, or else spends a lot of time hunched over paperwork.

Robert spends little time on introductions, mentioning only that Castiel is one of the people they’ve hired on for accounting and that his office is the next one down the hall from Dean’s. Dean resolves to stop by to introduce himself and apologize for nearly running the guy over, later.

After that, the meeting is all schedules and marketing strategies and cutbacks in various departments—Dean listens and absorbs, and passes on the box of donuts when it’s handed to him, a touch mournfully. Health kicks, he thinks, only sound good when you’re reading about them, not when you’re _experiencing_ them.

When the meeting draws to a close it’s nearly lunchtime, and Dean has rarely been more glad to get out of a up and stretch his legs than he is when he steps out of the glass-walled conference room and heads for his office. Just ahead of him in the hallway he sees Castiel, going into newly appointed office; Dean stops, and and waits a polite thirty seconds before knocking on the windowed door.

A husky voice—gravelly, even—answers, “Come in,” and Dean pushes the door open to find Castiel just situating himself behind the businesslike black desk that sits with its back to a window overlooking the street.

“Hey,” Dean greets, and gives the guy a friendly smile. “I’m Dean Smith. Head of sales, right up the hall from you. And, uh, the asshole that nearly hit you with his car this morning. I was hoping I could apologize.”

He’s expecting Castiel to be angry, at least irritated; but the guy just smiles faintly and says, “Don’t worry about it,” leaving Dean with an oversupply of useless follow-up phrases and a sense of startled relief. “Please, come in.”

“Uh, right.” Dean strolls nearer, holds out a hand to shake—and Castiel beholds it like some inexplicable gesture before grasping it in his own and pressing his other hand over Dean’s knuckles rather than giving it a proper shake. Weird, Dean thinks, but doesn’t say anything.

“It’s good to meet you, Dean Smith,” Castiel says, and releases his hand before motioning at the chair on the other side of the desk. “You may sit, if you like.”

Dean sits, rolls back to stretch his legs, still cramped after the meeting. “You, too, man,” he offers. “And, again, I’m sorry, and, hey—if there’s anything you don’t know or need here at Sandover, I’d be happy to help.”

“Thank you,” Castiel says, with rather more earnestness than the offer deserves. He glances away, turns in his chair. “I'd ask what the purpose of an office window with a view is, I think, if the desk is turned away from it.”

Dean huffs a surprised laugh. “Got me. Trying to crush our spirits, I’m sure. Still better than being in one of the cubicles downstairs, though.”

A smile tugs at the other man’s lips, and the expression makes his eyes light up, changes his whole face. “True.” After a beat, he adds, giving something akin to a sheepish grin, “I’m also surprised that you haven’t asked after my name. Most people seem to.”

Dean shrugs, grins back at him. “I come from a small town in Kansas,” he tells him. “One of my neighbors was named Constantine Missouri Maverick, honest to god. Your name seems pretty tame by comparison.”

“I see.” Castiel picks up a pen from his desk, clicks it, brings it to hover over a folder he’s deposited in front of himself, still looking faintly amused by—Dean’s presence, or Dean’s words, it’s hard to tell. “That is reassuring, though I suspect others will have a different response.”

“Cas,” Dean says, unthinkingly. “They can just call you Cas. That’s easy enough for everyone, right?”

He doesn’t expect the sudden, pensive wash of sadness that floods into Castiel’s eyes at the words, even though the other man still smiles. “Cas,” Castiel says, quietly. “Yes, I think so.”

“Great,” Dean says, and pushes himself to his feet, wondering what it is that he said that’s lead to such an intense emotion in the other man. “I’ll see you around, yeah? Really, you need anything, you let me know. Johnson’s—the guy across the hall from you, head of accounting—an asshole, and most of the guys in your department aren’t really in the know about anything other than the accounts they’re currently dealing with.”

“Yes, Dean,” Castiel says, and gives him an indecipherable look as Dean leaves his office, wondering at the oddity of the man he’s just met. 

—

Over the next week, Dean finds himself running into Castiel often—in the break room during his lunch hour, or in the garage on the way to his car (Castiel doesn’t drive, he discovers, just leaves through the garage because it exits in the direction of his home), or out in the hallway when he’s going to get copies or various other files and supplies.

They talk a lot, about Sandover, and the city, about virtually any subject that comes to Dean's mind. Castiel shares little about himself, yet manages to seem utterly open to absolutely all of anyone else: Dean jokes to him that if he didn’t know any better he’d assume Cas was a corporate spy, sent to infiltrate the company to learn of its winning stock-market strategies. Cas just gives a slight laugh at that, but Dean thinks he sees a hint of that all-encompassing sadness from before.

Dean starts to notice little things, after a while—don’t let anyone say he’s not observant—things like the way Castiel sometimes looks at the sky with so much longing that Dean doesn’t know what to make of it, and the way he always seems to smell of wind and the passing of a rainstorm (and Dean doesn’t let himself dwell on that, because noticing things like that? that’s weird, Dean), and the fact that the few books stacked in his office aren’t the sort that people keep to look smart but the kind that look like they’ve actually been read, strange things in an assortment of languages and genres.

After two weeks and a particularly successful close, Adler invites all of them to a company dinner, Castiel included, even though he’s not in marketing. Dean’s known Adler for a while, now—worked for him for three and a half years, if he stops to count—and he tends to be stingy, as all rich men who want to stay rich are; but he’s also prone to occasional displays of extravagance, and Cas, Dean is still convinced, is running some kind of con on people at the office, because they take to him and his strangely-phrased questions and direct stares as though they’ve known him forever. 

For all that he seems to get on well enough with the others, though, Dean notices that Castiel remains distant. If he thinks about it, the only person that Castiel talks to, really talks to, beyond listening to their complaints of the day or a quick chat in the lounge, is Dean himself.

So it’s not particularly surprising, really, that when Adler takes all of them out to Chez Roux Cas ends up sitting across from Dean at the end of one of the tables that their party appropriates (all in immaculate suits and glinting cufflinks and nice ties, save for Cas, who looks a little more plain in his black suit and blue tie and the dumpy raincoat that he folds over his arm.)

They wind up slightly removed from the main conversation, though Dean makes sure to occasionally turn towards Adler and join the conversation with his boss and other marketing representatives. Dean knows perfectly well, after all, that future promotions depend on his image and personality as much as on the work he does. 

Mostly, though, he talks to Cas. Somehow, they stray onto the subject of family—Dean thinks Castiel must have asked after his, though he doesn’t remember, later. “A sister,” Dean tells him, fingers wrapped around a wine glass in one hand and a fork in the other, “I have a sister. Jo. Strong-headed like you wouldn’t believe, and smart and pretty, too. Slowly taking over the world starting with a studio in Los Angeles, you know?” 

Cas gives him a slightly blank look at that, and Dean snorts, because sometimes Cas seems to miss the oddest things. “Actress,” Dean explains. “She just got one of her first dramatic roles this year, actually, on some show on Fox. Calls me every week to ask me what I thought of the episode.” He gives a slight sigh and picks at his salad, adds, “I can never actually catch it when it airs. Got something like five weeks of it DVR’d that I haven’t managed to get to. I think she’s sad about that, but I just can’t seem to find the time.” 

He glances up to find Castiel looking what he can only describe as terribly fond, intense blue eyes gone soft. “You miss her,” Cas says, more statement than question. His own food sits mostly untouched, though Dean thinks that most of the wine at their table has been moving in Cas’s general direction. He wonders, abstractly, how it is that the guy doesn’t seem to be getting drunk.

“Yeah,” Dean admits. “Kind of a lot, really. We were pretty close as kids, the hair-pulling and failing to share aside.” He shakes his head. “Mom and dad keep saying I should call more, too. I feel like I’ve been alienating all of them with my job.” 

“Surely you go back for holidays.” Castiel leans forward a little on the table, his shoulders slumping familiarly. 

“I was going to, last year.” Dean gives a shrug. “Adler ended up scheduling a big merger just before Christmas, and I had to stay and work.” He doesn’t bring up just how much he’d been hoping to get to fly back home to Lawrence, or how disappointed his parents and sister had sounded over the phone when he’d called to let them know that he wouldn’t be coming. 

Except Castiel looks like he knows, anyway, looks like he’s seen right into his thoughts and spotted the knot of sadness and anger (mainly at himself) that Dean feels at having to distance himself from his family. It’s strange, being looked at like that: it makes him feel slightly discomfited and pleased at the same time, like maybe he’s found someone that really understands. “What about you?” Dean asks, suddenly curious. “Family here in the city, or . . . ?”

Castiel smiles, rather sadly, and looks down at the table. Distantly, Dean notices the long dark eyelashes resting against sharp cheekbones, the creases at the edges of Cas’s eyes. “No, no one here. My brothers and sisters are all quite far away.” 

“Big family?” Dean asks, though he feels as though he ought to tread more carefully than he does.

“Very,” Castiel says. “Many sisters. Many brothers. We, ah—“ he folds his hands on the table, briefly lifts his shoulders. “I suppose we don’t get on very well, anymore.”

“Oh,” Dean says. “Sorry, man.” Tentatively, he asks, “What happened?”

“We didn’t see eye-to-eye on . . . important subjects. All important subjects, actually.” Castiel looks back up at him, takes up his wineglass again, his eyes sparking over the rim as he lifts it to his lips. “I still don’t know if I regret our falling out, though I do miss many of them.”

Dean raises his eyebrows. “That bad, huh.”

Castiel swallows, sets his glass down, lips twitching up in another half-smile. “Oh, yes. They get the planet, I get my radical opinions and these bones.”

“What kind of opinions are those?” Dean casts a glance over to where Adler is telling an anecdote, thinks that, really, that’s the conversation he should be listening to; but at the moment he doesn’t care, is far more interested in learning about the enigmatic accountant (and if that’s not an oxymoronic term then Dean doesn’t know what is) seated across from him. 

“Free will, for example.” Another shrug, barely-there, concealing something much bigger, Dean thinks. “My family is very, shall we say, conservative.”

“Catholics?” Dean guesses, is surprised to see Castiel laugh. 

“Something like,” Cas agrees. “Very religious.”

“And you’re not.” He sees Castiel’s fingers twitch towards an inner jacket pocket, spots a hint of cord and a glint of gold before Castiel seems to rethink the motion and withdraws his hand. 

“No,” the accountant says, rather quietly, so that it’s almost lost under the continual babble and clinking and vague classical of the restaurant. “No, I do not have faith.”

“Amen,” Dean mutters, and takes a gulp of his own wine before glancing back up the table. He feels like he’s just hit something very close to Cas’s heart, and that maybe Castiel let him do so, because he could have steered the conversation away, and he didn’t. 

Dean doesn’t quite know what to make of that, but he holds on to the thought that maybe Cas is just as lost and lonely as he is.

—

Castiel still has not taken up the human habit of sleeping—getting his mind to shut down has proven an impossible task—and it leaves him with long stretches of darkness when the city glitters outside below his balcony and the world feels quieted, slowed to a leisurely hum.

He does try to sleep, at first; lies awake on the bed in his near-empty bedroom, watching the ceiling, trying to find that captivating relaxation that most humans seem to be able to summon at will. Castiel becomes intimately acquainted with every groove and bump on his ceiling, but does not sleep.

After he stops trying, he starts going out on the balcony more often, leaning on the railing and watching, or leaning on it and closing his eyes, spreading his senses as far as they will go, feeling every flickering, dozing spark of life around him, the surrounding thrum of human souls. The city glows with it, and it almost overwhelms him, the first time he tries; but he grows slowly accustomed, starts to appreciate the sensation.

Sometimes he spends whole nights on that balcony, watching the edge of the sky change colors minutely from light pollution-orange to the pale white-blue-yellow of morning, watching the moon move across the sky before it sinks behind the skyscrapers of downtown. His apartment is fairly high up in his building, and it’s perched on a rise, and when the breeze buffets him he can almost pretend he’s flying again.

Other nights, when he can’t bear the throbbing in his Grace, the longing for home, he tries to drive himself to distraction. He has a TV, because the apartment is furnished the way Castiel thinks a human place would be, at the barest minimum; and he flips it on and lets it run its noise in the background, unable to bring himself to focus on fake people and fake things and fake places.

Instead he reads, furiously, reads in English from different centuries and Hindi and Russian and various forms of Chinese and Hebrew and Arabic, reads everything and anything he can find, absorbs human books like a human might drink water, tries to find the meaning they seem so convinced lies in the words. So many humans spend so much time trying to infuse their existence into written communication that he’s certain something important must lie in it; and he looks for it with abandon, in everything, in every tale.

He thinks maybe he understands, finally, one night. When he reads through a book called _All Quiet on the Western Front_ , infomercials warbling in the background, he thinks he finally understands—realizes that, strangely, his vessel’s eyes are watering and his throat is constricted, all from reading a personal account of an event that he once watched with detached angelic stoicness.

Castiel doesn’t touch personal narratives for a while after that, sticks to reading exploratory tales and nonfiction and odd religious texts, because feeling so intensely from a handful of words on a page scares him.

Still other nights—when he doesn’t wish to read, wants for a more active distraction—Castiel withdraws the box of chalk he keeps in one of his trench coat’s pockets and draws.

He draws on the hardwood floors and on the walls and on the counters; draws intricate Enochian symbols and complex mathematical proofs, uses systems the humans haven’t even invented or fathomed. He reconciles the theory of relativity and quantum mechanics on his kitchen floor, in between circular symbols and the harsh letters of the angelic tongue, writes little notes to his siblings in the margins ( _I miss you, Anna; don’t drink too much, Balthazar._ )

Sometimes he snatches out paper instead, draws furiously, trying to pull out of his mind images of what his siblings might look like on paper; but he can’t seem to capture it on this plane, ends up frustrated, with dozens of crumpled sheets with strange patterns and shapes strewn across the apartment.

And lately Castiel finds himself thinking about Dean Smith, too, and writes brief lines of symbols on the walls that might represent the ripple that Dean’s influence makes in his otherwise unremarkable, grounded existence. (He wonders what Dean would say if he knew what Castiel was; thinks of this strange human that drives himself so hard to excel at his job but misses his parents and his sister and the family home back in Lawrence, who seems to Castiel to long for contact but doesn’t reach out.)

In the morning, as he steps towards the door, he blinks and all evidence of his scrawling vanishes, leaves the apartment looking as pristine and unlived-in as ever.

He always wonders, as he shuts the door, what Dean Smith does in his free time, and whether he ever feels just as achingly alone in the sea of human lives that surround him.

—

They start their little game about a week after the corporate dinner. It starts unintentionally, really; Dean drops a file in Cas’s office while Cas is out getting coffee in the employee’s lounge and realizes he’s failed to sign off on one of the documents, and uses the only pen lying on Cas’s desk to do so.

Out of habit, he tucks it forgetfully into his jacket pocket instead of putting it back, and heads back to his office.

A few minutes later there’s a knock on his door and Cas pokes his head inside, asks, “Dean, do you know where we may requisition additional office supplies?” 

“Uh—“ Dean blinks, realizes he’s got Cas’s pen in his pocket. He pulls it out, says, “Catch,” and tosses it across the room.

Cas catches it with surprising precision, his hand darting out to snatch it out of the air. He raises his eyebrows, expression tinged with mischief. “Did you steal my pen while I was out?”

And Dean, not quite sure why he does it, grins and says, “Maybe. What’s it to you?”

“There will be retribution,” Cas promises, eyes bright, and vanishes back into the hallway, clicking the door behind him.

That’s how it begins, and by the end of the week Dean’s office is missing three pens, a stapler, a holepunch, and a full box of paperclips.

He decides that the only appropriate retaliation would be to steal his stuff back without Cas noticing, and take something of his in the process. 

He sneaks into his office during lunch break, when he’d usually be running out to get something low-carb at the health food place on the end of the block. It only takes him a minute to find his things, haphazardly tucked into an empty drawer of Cas’s desk.

There’s a yellow sticky note stuck to the stapler, reading, in Castiel’s sharp print, _Well done._

“Well done,” Castiel's voice echoes from the doorway, and Dean looks up to find Cas standing in it, hands tucked into his trench coat’s pockets, grinning. Dean hadn’t heard him enter; the guy moves like a cat when he wants to, utterly noiseless. 

“Damn,” Dean says, and straightens, piling his things awkwardly into his arms. “And here I thought I was going to get a chance to get back at you properly.” 

“Am I to take that as a declaration of office warfare?” An eyebrow raised in amusement.

“Pretty sure you declared war when you snuck out all of these,” Dean says, and thinks that Adler would probably be horrified to discover that several of his most high-level employees are also involved with a game as petty as filching each other’s office supplies.

The life of an desk worker is dull, though, and Dean’s willing to find fun where can. He shuffles towards the door with his armful of office supplies as Cas walks back around to his desk, saying, “Did I.”

“Definitely,” Dean tells him, and clicks the door shut, heading to his office.

He wonders how long it’ll take Cas to notice that Dean snatched his notepad off his desk on the way out.

—

It’s funny, really. Dean hasn’t had a close friend since college, and even then it took him a long time to get to know someone well enough for that; yet within the space of a month and a half he finds that Cas is probably his best friend, if not his only one.

He’s got acquaintances and business partners and colleagues, of course. People he’ll have dinner with to discuss work and not hate it, people he might talk to about the Sunday game, so on—but no one that he really feels comfortable enough around to call a _friend_ , except that Cas seems to have shown up in his life and turned all that on its head.

It’s not as though he even knows the guy that well. Cas is still fairly silent in regards to himself, preferring to let others talk about themselves instead, and Dean tends not to push him. But between their ‘office warfare’ (Castiel is currently ahead; Dean is missing his stapler again, and two highlighters, and he hasn’t been able to locate either in Cas’s office) and talking during lunch breaks and that corporate dinner, Dean’s somehow managed to get more comfortable around him than he has with anyone in a very, very long time.

For once, when Jo calls him for a weekend update, he has something to talk about other than work, at least technically. “You’re having a war with this guy that involves stealing office supplies?” she asks incredulously over the phone, on Saturday night. “Aren’t you supposed to older and more mature, or something?”

“A man’s possessions are an important thing,” he tells her, and hears her snort as he leans on his kitchen counter, eyes on the flat screen tv in his tastefully-furnished living room. He finally has a moment to watch the show Jo’s on, and he’s not passing the opportunity up, not least because she’d chew him out if he didn’t. “Cas is a good guy. Not as—fake as the other guys at the office, you know? Kinda genuine.” 

“I got that,” Jo says. “You told me about the guys you worked with. Most of ‘em sound like grade-A sociopathic douchebags.”

“Little sisters aren’t supposed to use that kind of vocabulary,” Dean grunts, and he hears her laugh again.

“I got it from you,” she assures. “Anyway, I’m glad you’ve finally managed to acquire some kind of social life, even if it is kind of pathetic and stunted.” More kindly, she goes on, “Sandover’s not good for you.”

“Hey.” Dean winces as the main character (a disgruntled-looking doctor) on Jo’s show makes a particularly scathing remark on-screen, refocuses on Jo. “Don’t spend time worrying about me, worry about you. You’re gonna be great. Focus on what you love, right?”

“I’m focused,” Jo says. “Like you. Difference is, I’m doing something I _really_ love. Are you?”

“Of course I am,” Dean says, even though it’s a lie, really, because no one in the universe actually _loves_ marketing—at least, no one working at Sandover. “Like I said, don’t worry about me.”

“That’s what sisters are for.” Jo sighs, and Dean hears an indistinct shout. “Look, I gotta go. We’re having a cast party, and other producers are gonna be there, and—you understand.”

“Go, go,” Dean urges, and says his goodbyes before hanging up the phone.

Left alone with the television, the house feeling terribly quiet in the absence of Jo’s voice, Dean makes a snap decision and reaches for his work phone, texts Cas. (Sandover insists they all be capable of reaching each other at all hours, so he’s got his number, along with another dozen people in marketing.)

 **me:** hey man you busy tonight?  
 **Castiel:** I am never busy.

Odd response, Dean thinks, but whatever; he’s tired of sitting around alone, and he likes Cas’s company, weirdness included.

 **me:** want to come over and watch tv with pizza, or something? better than sitting around moping on a saturday night, or whatever it is you do  
 **Castiel:** Of course, Dean. What is your address?  
 **me:** 7816, maybury rd. apt D7  
 **Castiel:** I’ll be there soon.

It only takes twenty minutes for the knock to come at Dean’s door, but by then he’s got a frozen pizza (and screw his health kick) in the oven and several beers cooling in the fridge. He opens the door to find Cas looking like he always does (sometimes Dean wonders if his entire wardrobe is made up of multiple copies of the exact same suit), motions for him to come in. “Hey, Cas. No casual apparel for you, huh?”

“Hello, Dean. And no, I think not.” The man glances down at himself as though he’s never thought about it, and Dean doesn’t put it past him to have never actually done so. He steps inside, and Dean shuts the door behind him, leads the way into the connected living room and kitchen. “Spacious,” Castiel rumbles.

“Uh, yeah,” Dean says. “I like the exposed ventilation, and, you know, the view.” He motions to the right, though it hardly bears mentioning—the entire wall of the living room is really one massive window, looking in the direction of downtown, providing what he’s sure is one of the best views in the city. “Kinda freeing, though it feels empty, sometimes.”

“I know what you mean,” Castiel says, and sits down on one of the high stools by counter that separate the living room and the kitchen, facing Dean. Dean grabs the beers out of the fridge and follows suit, dropping onto one directly across from him. 

They talk a while while the pizza finishes heating. Dean tells Cas about Jo’s progress at her studio, motions towards where he’s paused the television; Cas asks if Dean enjoys the show, and by the time the pizza completes they’re both on the couch, Dean stretched out with his feet propped on the coffee table and Castiel with his knees drawn up to his chest at the other end, shoes discarded to the floor. Both of them have beer, and Dean is staring to get pleasantly buzzed off his latest bottle.

Cas proves fairly baffled by the plot, which isn’t surprising, considering that _Dr. Sexy_ is kind of the soap opera to end all soap operas, complete with amnesiacs and cheating doctors and ridiculously convoluted plot lines that end up with someone accidentally trying to marry their cousin’s ex who is also their half-sister. Dean explains plot points when they come up, and Cas watches, absorbed, hands looped around his ankles. 

“It’s a strange parody, isn’t it?” he says, after a while, surprising Dean. His eyes are still focused on the screen, as though this is the first time he’s given any particular thought to television at all, though that makes no sense. “Parody of human existence. A distillate of the things that worry you on a regular basis.”

Dean takes a pull at his beer, eyebrows knitting together. “Sure, I guess. I mean, it’s not really what I specifically am worried about, obviously, which is sort of the point. I watch it ‘cause it’s nice to get lost in someone else’s problems. You know?” 

Castiel tilts his head a little—something he does, once in a while, that reminds Dean vaguely of a bird contemplating something new. “Substituting worrying about them for worrying about yourself.” 

“I don’t think most people bother thinking about it that much, but yeah. Basically. Forget your own issues, whatever, watch a bunch of doctors all trying to get laid with each other for a night.” Cas huffs a little laugh at that, and Dean stretches, shifts his feet on the coffee table. “Jo’s segment in this episode is coming up, I think. She’s the radiologist that comes in from the other department.” 

“Everything’s about forgetting,” Castiel says, and Dean sees his eyes go half-lidded, like he’s not seeing the screen anymore. “About yourself. What you’re doing. Not immersion, but diversion. Always trying to be anywhere but the present, as themselves.”

Dean decides he’s not quite drunk enough for a conversation this cerebral about _Dr. Sexy_ , of all things, and takes another good swig of beer. Something about what Cas is saying hits eerily close to home, close to the fact that under the skin of the Dean Smith that wears immaculate suits and suspenders and puts gel in his hair and gets in on time every day there’s another Dean Smith, one that just wants to go back to the farm and the garage and get dirt under his nails and engine grease on his hands. 

He claps Castiel on the shoulder, anyway, and says, “Yeah, we are. Keep watching. Jo’s really good, you’ll love her performance.”

Castiel shifts under his touch, and Dean sees a not-quite smile flick across his face as he rests back against the couch, a little closer to Dean than he was before. “I am sure she is.”

—


End file.
